There is a real difference between a home and an oil rig. Location, location, location. But unlike housing there are some major buyers with good balance sheets that will pick and choose their holdings for pennies on the dollar. Overall it likely reduces the risk of deflation. Lower income households will spend 99.9% of this money, I mean what are they going to put it into a savings account?

The short term outlook for gold miners does look like a 20%gamble IMO, but the demand is not short term. The posts here are correct about demand from China and India consuming almost all production. These classes "need" gold. Wouldn't we call that owning a home in the US?

Finance minister Michael Sarris orders all Cypriot banks to remain closed until Thursday, AP reports. Reuters originally indicated only Bank of Cyprus and Cyprus Popular would not reopen Tuesday morning. [View news story]

Surface RT is "on track to join Zune and the Kin in the great consumer electronics discount rack in the sky," writes MKM's Israel Hernandez, as he cuts his FQ3 estimates for Microsoft (MSFT). He adds there's "mounting evidence that Windows 8 is failing to resuscitate flagging PC demand," and believes PC shipments will likely see 10%+ declines at least through 1H13. Also: the head of Samsung's memory chip ops recently declared Windows 8 to be no better than Vista. [View news story]

Who would possibly benefit from MSFT misguided product flops? Nokia? Where is the market share going to go from these once great companies?

Talk to me after jobs grow 200K/month for 6 months, says the Chicago Fed's Charles Evans, likely the FOMC's leading dove (and that's saying something). "There is still a long way to go ... It is going to be difficult to expect the unemployment rate to come down very quickly," he tells the WSJ's Jon Hilsenrath. [View news story]

I like some of bigthinker's ideas here. So I work in the healthcare industry and here's a thought some may have not considered. There are many people who stay in unsatisfactory jobs just to maintain their healthcare benefits. Imagine a world where they can maintain their healthcare coverage and perform jobs they want to do. Happy workers are productive. Short term I think the market is a little overvalued, but long term there are not ALL negatives.